Composition in Retrospect by John Cage

i Must
Emphasize
The
Haughtiness
Of it all
but Don’t laugh

My
MEmory
of whaT
Happened
years agO
Does

Make
mistakeEs
Twisted
Hallucinations
Of the
Devil...(and things like that)

I just posted part of my story which turned out to be rather long, and didn’t end up sounding like a complete story anyway. I think I had a hard time writing a complete story because I was trying to work within certain limits. For anyone who hasn’t tried this type of exercise, I would recommend it. I think the fact that it’s so limiting makes it a clever canvas from which to write. It makes a lot of sense that creativity would emerge from a place that is so confined and structured. We did this in class last week when we wrote about, “Before I was _________, I was _________,” but that was kind of boring! I recently learned how to write a Pantoum. In a pantoum, you write poetry from this set blueprint that has you repeat lines over and over. Writing in these non-usual ways is a nice diversion from the usual writing we do.